1. Field Of The Invention
The invention herein pertains to printing and particularly to the mounting of flexographic printing plates on printing press cylinders.
2. Description Of The Prior Art And Objectives Of The Invention
In recent years many advances have been made in printing techniques and specifically in printing such as in the use of resilient polymer printing plates, hereinafter referred to as flexographic plates. Various techniques and devices have been tried in order to promptly mount such printing plates on press cylinders to insure that the plate is properly aligned. Misalignment of course can cause tremendous waste and expense and with the use of high speed presses with multiple printing cylinders, even one cylinder having a misaligned plate can cause extensive press downtime and wasted time and materials. Special measuring instruments have long been employed to insure correct plate alignment on the press but oftentimes, even with sophisticated instrumentation, registration is not achieved. One plate which is a fraction of an inch out of register can completely destroy a multicolor press run and result in the loss of hundreds or more dollars. Thus, techniques have been long sought in the printing industry to insure quick and correct plate positioning on the press cylinders.
The present invention was thus conceived with the disadvantages known of conventional plate alignment devices and methods and one objective of the present invention is to provide a mounting device for positioning a printing plate on a press cylinder which is simple to use and accurate in its results.
It is another objective of the invention herein to provide a mounting device which is relatively easy to learn to use and which is inexpensive to purchase.
It is another objective of the present invention to provide a mounting device which can be utilized by those with relatively little experience in the printing trade for a variety of printing plates.
It is also an objective of the plate invention to provide a method for mounting one or more printing plates on plate supports which will require little time and which will insure accurate plate alignment on the press.
Other advantages and benefits of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art as a more detailed description is presented below.